The Never-dying Confusion over the Never-die Promise of Jesus

"Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again. Martha saith unto him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day. Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this? She saith unto him, Yea, Lord: I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world." John 11: 23-27 [KJV]

These words of Jesus, that those who believe in him will never die, have been appropriated many times in the thousands of years since he spoke them by cult leaders who offer their followers the same promise. Never mind that every one of Jesus' disciples died, typically by violent means; it's incredibly easy to found a cult on this premise, and, contrary to what one would think, these typically continue without all that much of a hitch following the deaths of their founders. That is, Never-die movements never seem to die, so strong is the temptation to appropriate this promise as one of eternal life in this present age. 

But what did Jesus actually mean by “Everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die” [ESV]? Well, commentators have taken different approaches to solving this, with various Bible translators following their leads. One of the easiest ways out has been to focus on the eschatological context of Martha's affirmation, and interpret Jesus as meaning, “When I return, everyone who is then alive, of those who have believed in me, will be immediately translated into eternity in a resurrection body.” Convenient as that is, I don't see it coming across in any of the dozens of versions I checked.

What many translators do instead is to modify 'will never die' with some emphatic modifier like “really.”

And everyone who lives and believes in me will never really die. [ERV]

That, I guess, gives some room for the expositor to further address the problem of Jesus' disciples actually dying, but doesn't really say how that works. Nor does it actually translate the Greek.

Some play around with the conjunction a little, without coming up with anything new, other than perhaps to emphasise that one actually has to be living as a beliver to appropriate this promise:

And whoever lives by believing in me will never die. [NIV]

As can be expected, the Amplified finds room for a couple of these options:

And whoever continues to live and believes in (has faith in, cleaves to, and relies on) Me shall never [actually] die at all.

The Message basically combines all of them:

And everyone who lives believing in me does not ultimately die at all.

But I'd like to direct you to that last clause, with a word not found in any of the dozens of other versions: ultimately. This actually translates the final clause of Jesus' statement in Greek, εισ τον αιωνα, literally, 'unto the age'. What readers of most English versions miss out on is that 'die' is actually negated three times in this verse, which is so difficult to express in English that only this hyper-paraphrase actually manages to translate all three of them. 'ου', 'εισ τον αιωνα' and 'μη' become 'does not', 'ultimately', and 'at all'.

I think the key to understanding this is that third negation expressed in the original, εισ τον αιωνα. That is, anyone who believes in Jesus (and I think the NNIV may even be on to something here: anyone who lives by believing in Jesus, or to expand it a bit, believes in Jesus whilst he still lives—there being no second chance once earthy life is over) will only be “mostly dead” when his body succumbs to mortality; but not “all dead,” because that body awaits a future resurrection. And to prove this, Jesus will shortly resurrect the body of Lazarus, purposely left to stew in the grave long enough for decomposition to begin.

So don't get tripped up by this passage, or trapped by the claims of a cult founder: Jesus promised, not a never-ending life stuck in a sinful human body, but something far better: an eternity in a resurrection body. All that is required is that your physical death, when it does come, finds you believing in him.

Air Safety Advisory

 

I've been watching a lot of air crash videos lately, so I thought I'd make one more post on the topic, as air travel begins to heat back up again after the relaxation of travel restrictions. These are likely to be re-imposed, and re-eased, multiple times, so this post should remain relevant.

I've come to the conclusion is that by far the most dangerous commercial aircraft to fly in is one that is of a new design the pilots are not familiar with. This is because today's aircraft are so computerized that as often as not, now it's the computer that crashes the plane when it disregards what it regards as nonsense input from the pilot. A pilot not familiar with how to deal with this is likely to die along with his passengers, despite his best efforts to regain control. Although the recent 737 Max debacle showed, Boeing is not immune to this problem--but it affects Airbus planes more often, and with more deadly results, because Airbus planes are totally fly-by-wire, meaning that all control signals initiated by the pilot have to be approved by the computer before being passed on to the control surfaces.

If there's any comforting thought in all of this, it's that the airline safety business is extremely heuristic: whenever people die in a plane accident, the response is always two pronged: first to determine exactly what happened, and then to take whatever steps are necessary to keep it from happening again. If only the criminal justice business worked that way: it's real good at the former, but horrible at the latter.

Another life that wasn't wasted

 “Wally” Funk wanted to be an astronaut. But in the 1950's, when boys hoping to get a toy space helmet for Christmas were building imaginary spaceships out of cardboard boxes, girls weren't expected to have any such ambitions. It didn't matter that she was already a pilot, having taken her first lessons at the age of nine. Or that President Eisenhower himself had written her a letter congratulating her on her expert marksmanship; she was a girl, and girls couldn't march in the infantry, ride in the cavalry, OR fly o'er the enemy. And only military officers were being considered for the space program, so it just wasn't to be.

But Wally Funk had a secret weapon: longevity. Having been trained as a backup for the Mercury mission, and then turned away when there turned out to be seven men with the Right Stuff, she lived through the entire US space program, observing the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and Shuttle Missions from afar, while racking up an impressive series of “firsts”: first in her class at Stephens College (graduating at age 19), first female Flight Instructor at a US military base, first female Field Examiner for the FAA, first female Air Safety Investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board. And first place finisher, in a field of 80, of the Pacific Air Race. By the time the Shuttle program finally opened up to women, she was no doubt qualified in every way except one: she was now too old! She was turned down three times. And it's a good thing, by the way, that Christa McAuliffe, rather than Wally, got the nod to be the first civilian in space: she never made it, as the Challenger exploded shortly after takeoff, killing all aboard.

As for Wally, she lived on. And she kept flying, serving as the Chief Pilot for five different aviation schools. But she never gave up her dream. When the first Shuttle flight to be commanded by a woman took off, she was an honored guest at the launch. Finally, as the 21st century dawned, it looked as if civilian space travel might finally become a possibility. Wally took the money she'd inherited from her art collector parents, and royalties from her books, to make a down payment of the first Virgin Galactic space tourism flight. By this time she was in her seventies, and space tourism was still a decade off. But when the first flight finally took off with paying passengers, it was competitor Blue Orbit rather than Virgin Galactic. Their maiden flight set two records: 18-year old Oliver Daemen became the youngest person in space, and Wally, at 82, the oldest by half a decade (and it was a good thing for the record books that she was on that first flight, as the second, just a few months later, carried 90-year-old William Shatner). She had somehow managed to outlast the entire span of the male-only U.S. space program, AND to outlive the age restriction. In that way she was reminiscent of the first woman in space, who was sent along on an early robotic flight purely as a token, but kept on training long enough to see the Soviet space program open up to women, and became a fully qualified cosmonaut.

I was inspired to write this post when I noticed that, like Linus Pauling, Mary Wallace Funk got tired of not being allowed to study what she wanted to in high school, so dropped out and entered college at age 16. With all the progress they have made in so many other areas, in this way America have regressed: it's no longer possible for a frustrated genius to get into college without first ticking off the box of a secondary school education. At the very most, he or she can take limited college classes concurrently while completing secondary school, or complete it early by correspondence; just dropping out is no longer an option for bright young students like Linus and Wally.

I imagine there are a few exceptions in subsequent generations, but I suspect none from the 21st century.

A review of David Instone-Brewer's Bible Contexts Series - Chapter 20: Cain's "wife"

Dr. David Instone-Brewer is an eminent Bible Scholar in England, one of the experts responsible for the last tranche of changes to the NIV. He knows a lot more than I do about a lot of things, and since he makes it easy to access most of what he writes, I follow him to my advantage--especially in the area of Old Testament Studies, which is his specialty. What I've learned from him, however, are generally facts and insights I hadn't been exposed to before. I don't sit at his feet for much of what he weaves into his teaching, which are just standard tenets of atheism (although I admit, some of them are new to me as well). For although he identifies as an evangelical, he nonetheless looks to atheist scholars and their disciples to inform his interpretation of the Scriptures--and is thus oft led astray.

Dr. D is greatly hampered in his ability to gain insights from the book of Genesis, believing as he does that it was composed as a sort of religious fiction during the Babylonian captivity to inspire Jews not to lose hope in their present situation, or something along those lines. He doesn't believe that it is even intended to be a serious historical record, and certainly not that it was compiled from written eyewitness accounts. There is therefore no apparent limit to the imaginations his mind can supply from a reading of this section of the Scriptures, guided by the speculations of the atheists which lie behind much of his theology. And since he drinks deeply at the font of those who have no access to absolute truth, he all but admits that what he sincerely believes to be true today may be ridiculed a decade or a century from now, as atheist philosophers discard old and unworkable alternative explanations for how the world works, and imagine new ones yet to be disproven. This approach leads him far astray from orthodox understanding. 

Take, for example, his chapter on Cain's Wife. He already reinterprets the first two chapters of Genesis in an atheistic framework, starting with a random humanoid whose ancestral line went back to stardust. He then departs from the atheist narrative just a bit to give God credit for taking this human-looking animal, the pinnacle of billions of years of random evolution, miraculously granting him a human spirit, and then--in a most unusual departure from his involvement of the previous billions of years, and in a biological process we can hardly imagine, much less explain scientifically--splitting off a half-clone which became the first human woman. He then set the newly enlightened couple in special walled enclosure he called Eden and commanded them not to eat a certain fruit. They did so regardless, and as a result they were cast out of Eden to resume their evolutionary progress without any life-sustaining access to the fruit of the tree that conveyed some sort of immortality. And here enters Cain's Wife, who he proposes was a non-human, implying along the way that the host of present mankind must be descended from her.

I hesitate to critique Dr. D in any area of actual OT Studies, as he is an acknowledged expert in both the Hebrew language and rabbinical literature. But here he has left far behind anything directly related to the Hebrew Scriptures to dabble in Evolutionary Biology, in which he is no expert--leaving me on much firmer ground to dispute him. [Edit: he does claim biological expertise based on his undergraduate studies, but then, so could I, having sat for General Science in Bible College.]

I will be interacting in this post with Chapter 20 of his book Bible Contexts which, at least for now, can be found at his website http://www.biblecontexts.com/. He introduces the chapter as follows:

If Cain married someone living outside Eden, this would explain some strange details in Genesis. It would also explain how our gene pool contains so much variation.

---

His book is all about explaining strange details in Genesis with even stranger speculations. He sees a problem with God selecting just two humanoids--really, only one--to begin the human family tree. Although his God is capable of many amazing feats, Dr. D seems constrained by his acceptance of atheist teaching to place the Laws of Nature at a higher tier on the hierarchy than that occupied by Nature's God. The God who could split the first man in half at the sub-cellular level to produce the first woman was nonetheless stumped at providing this pair's descendants with enough genetic variety to produce the four blood types, so He needed to pull in some genes from the neighboring humanoids to pull it off. Thus, Cain's Wife. 

Now Mrs. Cain was not a Neanderthal, mind you--Cain had already inherited those genes from his long-dead humanoid ancestors. What she provided instead was access to the "rich gene pool" that had resulted from millions of years of primate evolution. Dr. D uses a modern analogy to explain why this was not only sufficient, but necessary, if humanity were to survive The Fall:

 Cain could, of course, have married his sister – though the Bible doesn’t say this happened. It is difficult to imagine her wanting to marry a brother (especially the nasty brother who murdered the nice one). Presumably this incest wouldn’t be dangerous like it is today because God could have made sure there weren’t any dangerous recessive genes in Adam’s chromosomes. However, our human race would be very weak if the entire gene pool had been limited to just Adam’s chromosomes. Restricted gene pools often cause problems in overrefined agricultural animals or crop lines because this makes them vulnerable to pests and changes in the environment. This is solved by interbreeding with wild species to reinvigorate the gene pool by introducing more variety.

Here he makes a mistake commonly perpetuated by pseudoscientists, assuming that a genetic bottleneck always results in a dangerously depleted gene pool. The reason modern agricultural crops and animals have depleted gene pools, and wild varieties don't, is precisely the result of human intervention to breed out unwanted variation. Absent that unnatural selection, a fairly robust set of genes will continue to be passed on, even in a small population. But racism is a powerful and primordial urge, such that organisms resist hybridisation and generally seek to mate with creatures most like themselves, resulting in further speciation, as any organisms that depart from the standard in the same direction tend to seek out each other for breeding, leaving an even more depleted genome to their descendants. Were it not for the balancing act of another primordial urge--that of men, having gone forth to conquer, seeking and finding sexual release amongst the females of the conquered races--humans would be much more genetically depleted than we are. 

If I were to hypothesize myself, I would say that God created Adam with two completely different sets of chromosomes, with each of the millions of gene pairs consisting of different alleles. Thus Eve was far more distant from Adam, genetically, than any two humans are today; at the time she was split off from him, she only shared 50 per cent of his genetic material. And if God were powerful enough to pull off forming yet another haploid set for the rest of Eve, then he only shared half of her genome--providing far more diversity than Cain could have brought into the young race by impregnating a distant descendant of the Neanderthals and Denisovans. Adam could well have carried one haploid gene for Type A blood, and one for Type B. We don't even have to split that in half again to get all three of the blood types just among their children, provided that Eve possessed the same. And if, post-Fall, any two of their children ended up with an allele that lacked the information for producing either the A or B antigen, Type O could emerge as early as their grandchildren's generation. It's a stupendous pity that Dr. D, with all his learning, didn't see how God could accomplish this without having Cain interbreed with a non-human. 

       Mutations occur very rarely, unless there are carcinogens present. This is good, because most mutations are dangerous – as seen by the effects of carcinogens. Reproductive cells are protected from mutations by DNA repair mechanisms, which make sure that accidental mutations are rarely passed on to our children. A few do get through – on average sixty-four mutations – though this is tiny compared to the three billion base pairs that are copied perfectly.⁴ However, some of these are so harmful that they result in miscarriage – about 10 percent of pregnancies end this way. So even a small increase in mutation rate would result in a lot more miscarriages.

Dr. D goes on at length to describe just how humanly impossible it would have been for God to actually get the human race going with just two people. Okay, and where does the book of Genesis imply that God can't do anything humanly impossible? This cognitive dissonance would be laughable, did he not with such sincerity lend credence to the atheist hypotheses. Of course, the way heredity works now, in our currently depleted human population, where any two humans on the planet share at least 99.9 per cent of the same genome, does not necessarily speak to how things would have worked back when they shared barely half of that. We don't really have any idea what a genuinely rich gene pool looks like, as the nature of genetic recombination means that some genes go missing with each successive generation, and after several thousands of years, every genome has become depleted to one extent or another--unnatural selection greatly accelerating the process. And since this goes against the collective wisdom of Evolution--which imagines, contrary to all evidence, the gene pool at large becoming progressively richer over time--Dr. D. just isn't going to hear this from his atheist mentors or their disciples.

So whom DID Cain marry? Well, as all scholars have noted, Genesis doesn't say. And why should it? If humanity began with only one man and one woman, and no ape-men to "enrich the gene pool," then of course he married his sister. Anyone with even half a human brain could figure that out with just a little help; there's no need to state the obvious. All we need is the succinct statement of the compiler of Genesis 3 that Eve was "the mother of all living." That leaves no room for any previous races to insert their alleles into the human genome, period. 

Dr. D should have stuck with interpreting and explaining the Bible, and left fairy-tale speculations to those who reject the Genesis account out of theological necessity. 

Liberals, Conservatives, and Traditionalists

 I've been musing lately on a certain sociological phenomenon, that humanity (at least in the cultures with which I'm familiar) can be divided into three distinct categories. Now, whilst the categories are distinct, it's also a phenomenon that many people, and groups, can be placed into one category for one issue, and into yet another on a completely different issue, and that these positions can change over a generation, and over a lifetime. Now, the distinctions all relate to how people view change. Liberals embrace change, believing it by nature to be good; on the other end of the spectrum, traditionalist reject change, believing it by nature to be bad; and, in between, conservatives are reluctant to change, but do not resist it per se, realizing that it may result in an improvement, just not assuming so without testing it first. A conservative came up with these categories, so those in the other two camps may not agree that they even exist as described; being probably too close to the question to further describe one of the categories objectively, I'll just focus my detached objectivity on the others.

Liberals tend to confuse the other two categories, as the people within both categories will often line up on the opposite sides of an issue, and seem to be the same. But traditionalists will likewise confuse liberals with conservatives, as those two groups will often appear to line up on the opposite side, all depending in either case on whether the change in question has passed the testing and found the approval of the conservatives.

The labels themselves can also be problematic: traditionalists don't call themselves by that title, and even liberals often prefer a label like 'progressive'. So it's one thing to label the categories, and yet another to get people to accept the label that describes them best.

Another interesting thing is the instability seemingly inherent in two of these categories. One would think perhaps that traditionalists, who hold that no improvement is possible over the old ways, would have passed on that belief from ancient times. But it turns out that in many cases, today's traditionalists are less than a handful of generations removed from liberal who got tired of stridently proclaiming that every new thing was by its very nature an improvement over the old, decided to give the pendulum a nudge back toward the other side of the spectrum, and didn't know when or how to stop its momentum. And many liberals are but one or two generations removed from traditionalists who had made a similar decision, just in the other direction. Apparently few can long endure a residence on either edge of the spectrum; excepting those few, and of course the many for whom the pendulum has happily found rest at the bottom of the arc, all are on the move, across any given generation, in one direction or the other.

I have seen this happen over the past generation with the licensing of homosexual relationships, which has become official government policy in the USA, and indeed throughout most of the world, only within the past decade. For a long time before that it was becoming more widely acceptable to liberals, at least in theory, being part of the preference for change which their category demands. But once the public policy debate was over, and it actually began to happen, many liberal Christians found that they didn't really want to be that liberal after all—that here was one issue on which they did align more with the conservatives and traditionalists. Thus a split began between those liberals holding tight to that end of the spectrum, and those liberals (for now) who wanted to nudge things back in the other direction, and that division continues to this day among the large denominations in America. One may be tempted to think by this that some sort of revival is afoot, but it's more likely just revealing a sociological axiom at work.

No, I'm not dead

 Despite just over three months having elapsed since my most recent post, I'm not dead; just suffering from writer's block. Here's something I had intended to post before the deadline:

There are several questions that arise when translating John 7:22, and two of them arise in the context of familial relationships: How does one translate πατερων, referring to Abraham and Isaac, who began the custom of circumcising their sons in accordance with God's covenant, and how does one translate ανθρωπον, referring to the typical recipient of that sign of the covenant, be it performed even on the Sabbath?

For the first one, 19 of 62 English versions surveyed translated it 'patriarchs', and I believe this to be a commendable improvement over 'fathers' which prevailed in the earlier versions. If a language has this sort of distinction between near and far ancestors, the latter should be used. The essential meaning here is that these were the founders of the Hebrew nation; their priority in time to Moses, not their ancestry of him, is what is being emphasized. So any word which contains the meaning of “the ancient elders of the people” or “the founders” would capture that emphasis well, and may resonate much better in people groups which revere the founders of their customs.
English translators have faced a lot of difficulty in translating ανθρωπον here, because the traditional translation, 'man,' doesn't fit very well in describing a person being circumcised on his eighth day. In Greek, ανθρωπον is used primarily to distinguish a human being from other sorts of living beings such as animals or angels, and to a lesser extent to carry the connotation that one is referring to an adult human rather than a younger one. It is not typically used to distinguish a male from a female, but it's difficult do avoid doing so, both in English generally, and in the context of its use here: only males were circumcised, and only week-old males would ever have been circumcised on the Sabbath. So, even though “a man” was long the default translation of ανθρωπον, and still in many cases the one to be preferred, it is a less acceptable translations here—yet it prevailed in the earlier translations, and persists in 46 of the 62 versions surveyed. Others have used “a person” which is truer to the core meaning of ανθρωπον, or “a boy” which is truer to the specific context. The unspoken back story here, essential to understanding the context in which Jesus spoke these words, was that Moses had given two seemingly contradictory pieces of legislation: Don't work on the Sabbath, and circumcise all boys on their eighth day. Thus for a son who was born on the Sabbath (counting that day as the first, and the succeeding Sabbath as the eighth days), both laws could not be kept, and the very religious leaders accusing Jesus of violating the Sabbath by doing the “work” of healing a man (ανθρωπον) themselves had, on this question, come down on the side of working on the Sabbath. So, if explanatory footnotes are used at all, this is the place where one should be. Or, if the translator is more given to paraphrase, a few words could be added to the verse to explain this.

The last question that I see arising in this verse is how to convey the tense of the last verb. Περιτεμνετε is a second person plural active indicative verb with a habitual aspect. This can be conveyed in English as “you often circumcise” or “you will circumcise,” or simply as “you circumcise.”
Lastly, I give examples of two fairly recent ways of resolving the translation issues inherent in this verse; one a more strict translation, and the other a looser one. I'm not entirely satisfied with where either one ended up, but they are both improvements toward a better understanding of the verse when expressed in English.

However, because Moses gave you the practice of circumcision (not that it came from Moses, but from the forefathers), you circumcise a male child on the Sabbath. -NET

But you work on the Sabbath, too, whenever you obey Moses’ law of circumcision (actually, however, this tradition of circumcision is older than the Mosaic law); for if the correct time for circumcising your children falls on the Sabbath, you go ahead and do it, as you should. -TLB

The Duggar Disaster deepens

 I see that this blog is drawing in a number of people seeking information on Josh Duggar, so it's time for another update. First of all, Blogspot has announced that as of July, they will no longer be sending email updates whenever I post on this blog, so this may be the last such announcement you get. Google continues to limit my exposure, since I refuse to participate in this for mutual gain, so anything I post here will get a diminished number of views at any rate. 

Now, on to the Duggars. Josh Duggar turns out to be an incorrigible sexual addict after all, having found a way to work around every limit put on him to date. This is of course a source of deep grief to his parents; his wife appears to still be in denial (she is currently expecting their seventh child--which, if he ends up serving anywhere near the prison term he faces, is likely their last). 

Now, what can I say to all that. Well, a few things. First of all, I'm glad he got caught. As careful as he was, clearly the feds have ways of locating people who seek out and share material online that's not protected by the Bill of Rights. I'm rather astounded, though, that it was Homeland Security who investigated the matter. Obviously this sort of crimes occurred before HS was a department of the federal government, but for some reason the investigation of these crimes has been taken away from the FBI at some level and transferred to them. It is a bit of concern that a cabinet department, familiar to those in totalitarian countries as focusing on defending the ruling party from the members of the opposition, is now in charge of investigating unprotected speech. 

Secondly, I receive a lot of inappropriate emails, with (usually somewhat blurred) obscene suggestions right in the subject line. They all go directly to Spam, and I never open the images in them, or click on any link in them. But the mere fact that they are emails addressed to me means that, from the perspective of someone monitoring traffic on my server, it's possible that I look like someone who is viewing illegal material. And such material could well be sent to me disguised in such a way that I would unsuspectingly open it to view--this did happen once, several years ago. So don't be too quick to judge someone who comes under such an accusation. Josh Duggar, on the other hand, had clearly structured his computer in such a way as to hide what he was doing--even going so far as to set it up on his work computer, where he could close his office door and indulge without the risk of his wife or kids catching him in the act.

Lastly, a brief comment on the costs of fame and fortune. When the Duggars embarked on their public career, it was in the realm of politics: Jim Bob ran for an open Senate seat. He lost, big time, but the fame that ensued catapulted him into the State House, and from thence to a gig on cable television. The Duggars thought the exposure was worth the opportunity it gave them to proclaim the virtues of a godly lifestyle to the world. But was it? Less than quarter century in, it certainly doesn't look like the gain has been worth the loss. Once nice thing about poverty is that it puts a lid on one's ability to get deep into certain sins. If one has to choose between putting food on the table and purchasing an inappropriate magazine, or getting an internet subscription, it limits the temptation. So, the riches that fame brought to the Duggars did come with an intrinsic cost. And it was the laptop of a political operative that first yanked Josh out of his sheltered world and introduced him to the siren call of online pornography, so the politics that catapulted them to fame also held a hidden bite. It turns out that raising your children in an extremely sheltered environment may leave them totally unprepared for handling the real world when they are set loose in it.

I grieve with the Duggars--all three generations. It looks like those seven kids are going to pretty much grow up without a daddy, or at least with a very distant one, adultery having long ceased to be a capital offense on this continent. I grieve for the missed opportunities to have done something different, with different results.  I grieve for the failed experiment in having a lifestyle worth proclaiming to the world. But I am relieved that fame and fortune have eluded me, and my family. Whatever mistakes we have made, whatever opportunities we have missed, whatever failures we have been--it all could have been worse, far worse, had fame and fortune intervened. 

I pray for Josh--that he will not be out of the reach of full repentance. And that it will reach him before his prison term begins. 

A review of Contact, an alleged work of science fiction: Part One

I recently had the opportunity to view Contact, a movie that was released over two decades ago—almost the amount of time it would take for a transmission of it to reach the Vega system. I was struck from very early on in the production by the similarities between it and Isaac Asimov's famous story, Nightfall. I have written several posts reviewing that story, which are available here. I suggest reading them now, for background, before going any further. 

Now, I'll start out by saying that although I was aware of the movie when it came out, and that it was discussed in the Christian Media at the time, I've had no thoughts about it whatsoever for the past twenty plus years, so I trust that everything I say here will be uninfluenced by any other reviews. As I review Contact, I'll continue to allude to my earlier observations on this topic, which remain very relevant. Inasmuch as it's a long movie, I'll probably do this review in several installments. But, to begin at the very beginning:

The movie opens with the iconic roar of the MGM lion, framed by the Latin motto, Ars Gratia Artis--Art for Art's Sake. Not a single frame of the actual movie has yet been shown, but already we are being set up to believe that what follows is just pure entertainment--science fiction. But is it? Might there also be a deeper agenda, Art for the Sake of Persuasion? 

We then move into the opening sequence, which is a juxtaposition of animated video and archived audio. The animation is a zoom-out that begins with a satellite view of Cape Canaveral, tracking westward as the sun overtakes it from the east. Meanwhile the audio track is a montage of news broadcasts interrupted by brief bursts of contemporary music, working backward from the present day as the camera recedes from Earth, both tracks accelerating: the animation rapidly passes the Moon, Mars, the Asteroid Belt, Ceres, and Jupiter—already moving much faster than the speed of light—as the audio track has already reached a quarter century before present, to the Watergate Scandal of President Nixon, then immediately on to M.L. King's March on Washington. By the time Jupiter and its moons recede into the background we can hear an announcement of the assassination of President Kennedy. Then, as Saturn fades into the distance, we race through another two decades, passing through the McCarthy Era all the way to the beginning of the American involvement in World War Two. What is being hinted at is that news broadcasts are traveling into space at the speed of light, with the very earliest broadcasts leading the way into the rest of the galaxy. A bit of a stronger hint comes after the disappearance of Saturn, as the sun itself blinks out and we see a rapidly receding series of stars and galaxies as the audio takes us back through the Thirties to the earliest days of Radio. Then the audio itself gradually fades to background static, as we continue to back our way through a dusty nebula and into intergalactic space, where total silence reigns. Other galaxies zoom by with increasing rapidity, until the screen becomes a total blur which resolves into the left eyeball of our protagonist, the young Ellie Arroway. Meanwhile, the audio picks back up again as background static, resolving into the signal of a ham radio she is operating, with her voice now in real time, attempting to make contact with “anyone out there.” Thus the stage is set for a lifetime of hovering over a radio, seeking not only a signal from another rational being, but, most importantly, the opportunity for interaction therewith. And we see her determination as she scans the dials in search of a response, getting encouragement from her father to keep trying—then, when she finally lands a station out of Pensacola, he congratulates her for achieving the “farthest one yet.”

Okay, at this point in the actual screen-acting, we already move from the realm of science to science fiction, because that's just not how the propagation of ham radio waves works. One does not start out pulling in nearby signals, then progressively move to the outer limits on the country, then farther out into the hemisphere, and finally, with “a big enough antenna,” to the other side of the world. The propagation of radio waves on the frequencies of the amateur bands is such that one is actually more likely to land a station a thousand miles away, than an hundred. But, not to let the facts of science get in the way of a good story, the scriptwriters expect us to believe that Ellie will start small, and keep progressing until she is at the point of asking radio operators on the other side of the Universe to “come back.” 

But that's not Ellie's only goal: in the very next scene we see her asking her father, with growing excitement, how far out it is possible to hear: California? Alaska? China? The Moon? Jupiter? Saturn? Suddenly she grows reflective, and asks her dad the question only a ten year old could ask: Could we talk to Mom?

Ah, now the subject of Religion intrudes, because young Ellie is asking an existential question, one immeasurably beyond the reach of the technology that so fascinates her. Science she knows, geography and astronomy she is beginning to understand, but of the Eternal State, she is much the innocent child, asking questions far beyond her ken. Here her father fails her—being unable to give her the answer she wants—because he, like her, only believes in Science, and Science has no answers to any of the deeper questions of life. And here the movie reveals its main argument. Having, at the behest of her father, dismissed the possibility of making contact beyond the grave, Ellie turns to the next best thing: making contact beyond the Solar System. And here we stop to consider the implications.

”Hey Dad, do you think there's people on other planets?” she asks, again in all innocence. “I don't know Sparks, but it seems like if it's just us, that would be an awful waste of space.” And is precisely here that the movie lands on its main theme: this phrase will be repeated at crucial points in the plot, to drive the message home that somewhere, on a cosmic scale, there is a sense that it would be wrong for Earth to be the only populated planet. This doctrine is never proven, nor is there ever even seen any need to prove it. Ellie simply accepts it on faith, and goes on to make it the guiding belief in her life's work, which is to search for, and find, signs of intelligence in outer space. She will run into many obstacles in that quest—the entire plot of the movie consists of her overcoming them, one after the other—but she will never be shaken in her core belief that there MUST be someone else out there—and an unstated corollary to that belief is that they MUST be so immeasurably greater than humankind, both in intelligence and technology, that they will be able to bridge the unbridgeable gulf between us, and make meaningful contact. It only remains for us to let them know we are here, and to devotedly await their response.

Do you see where this is headed? One thing this movie does, and does well, is to demonstrate that humankind is incorrigibly religious: everyone is forced by their very nature to believe in a higher order of beings, ones whose powers and understanding are beyond our comprehension. And the movie will go on to demonstrate our absolute impossibility of approaching these beings using our own abilities, or of comprehending them using our own understanding. Atheistic Science is turned on its head, and shown to be just another religion after all. 

I think that's enough for the first installment; we are now fully seven minutes into a two-and-a-half-hour movie, and in the next scene we will see Ellie instantly transition to Dr. Arroway the astronomer, having finally achieved the ultimate in her muttered ten-year-old goal of "get[ting] a bigger antenna."

Lisa Miller, a sister in chains

 Here is the text of the latest letter from Lisa Miller, via Pablo:

Dear Brethren and Friends,

Greetings in the name of our Lord, the ONE Who is All-Knowing. I greet you today from the Florida Detention Center in Miami.  I arrived here on Jan 27 and I am still in quarantine -- day 21 (my bunkie tested positive for COVID, so instead of being released, today I took another swab COVID test and will wait for the results right where I am -- in quarantine.), in a 2 bunk, approximately 14 x 7 feet cell which is locked 24/7. 

My food is served through a 12 x 4 inch slot (within the main door) which is also kept shut and locked except when used to pass items such as mail, clothes and books from guard to inmate or when we needed to be handcuffed (we turn our back to the door, stoop a bit and thrust our hands through the opening).

I am so grateful that God knows all I need.  Even though I am in prison, God has blessed and spoiled me with rest and quietness after the experiences of being propelled through the realities of being handcuffed by marshals (I had 5 escorting me at one point!), patted down, strip searched, questioned endlessly, fingerprinted at every "station" of processing, and other such memorable actions before being placed in cell 31 of the Solitary Housing Unit (SHU) (in lieu of being brought directly into the women's unit).  My God knows just what I need.

Thank you to all who have written to me.  Words cannot express enough how I have been encouraged and built up in Christ by your kindness.  Even though you may not receive a personal thank you, (I am limited to how many stamps I can order per month and I am not permitted to receive stamps from the outside), please know that you have blessed me by your letters of encouragement and with your prayers for both my daughter and me.  THANK YOU!

Please continue to pray for my daughter.  Even though I believe God IS taking care of her she still needs the prayers of His people.  I miss her!  Even so, I feel comforted knowing that she has prayer coverage. 

Please continue also to pray for me.  Pray that I will "make myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them" (I Cor. 9:19b), and that I "give no offense to Jews or to Greek or to the church of God" ( I Cor 10:32).  Personally, I have prayed (for years) that God would put me in the places where He wants me to be; consequently, I know that I am to be here.  Please pray that I honor God in His choices for me.

In His Service,

Lisa Miller #27502-509 [note this number is different than provided on previous newsletter]

P.O. Box 019120

Miami, FL  33101

**Important:  Please note my current direct address. If you do not use this address with my correct prison inmate number of #27502-509, I may not receive my mail. :( 

Thank you!

Also, do not only put the name, address and prisoner's number on the envelope, but also directly on the letter or card you send.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

And an update on Isabella:
https://www.eagletimes.com/ap/now-adult-in-same-sex-custody-battle-seeks-removal-from-suit/article_83fe3209-85e5-55c8-89e2-7c83a7061576.html

The now-18-year-old woman at the center of a yearslong, same-sex custody dispute that spanned Vermont to Nicaragua said in court documents filed Wednesday that she wants her name removed from a 2012 civil lawsuit filed in her name.

Lisa Miller is facing federal criminal charges in Buffalo for taking Isabella Miller to Nicaragua in 2009 rather than sharing custody with her former civil union partner, Janet Jenkins, of Fair Haven, Vermont.

In affidavits written and signed last month by Isabella Miller in Managua, Nicaragua, and filed in federal court in Burlington, Vermont, on Wednesday, the now-adult says she has been “happy, safe, healthy and I have been well cared for” since arriving in Nicaragua.

Isabella Miller said she remains outside the United States of her own free will.

“If (and when) I desire to return to the United States I will do so,” she said in the affidavit filed by Vermont attorney Deborah Bucknam.

Lisa Miller's Legal Battle Resumes

It's interesting that it was the very week in which an important deadline passed in the RICO suit against her, that Lisa Ann Miller surrendered to US authorities at the embassy in Mangua. And that this even did not register so much as a blip in the national news, formerly obsessed with the case. Not even when she was put on a plane to be rendered to the Miami Dade Detention Center for quarantine as she awaits trial for kidnapping her own daughter--the daughter who prayerfully accompanied her to the Managua airport. It's as if she is still surrounded by cloaking angels. And certainly she is being upheld in fervent prayer.

BREAKING NEWS in the Miller Kidnapping Case!

 Dear Brethren and Friends,

Greetings in the name of our Lord- the One who is All- Powerful and All- Knowing. I praise Him for providing for, protecting as in a cloud pillar, and sheltering my daughter, Isabella, and I these last over 11 years as I have been raising her for Christ in an undisclosed location. She is now 18 and free from the court rulings that I disregarded that stated that she was not to be taught the sacredness of marriage according to God:

Haven't you read that the Creator made them male and female... for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefor what God has joined together, let no one separate. (Gen. 2:24, Matthew 19:3-6, Gen 1:28, Eph. 5:31-32)

and from where I was put on the stand for the day concerning my Biblical conviction of how to raise my daughter due to being accused of “emotionally abusing” her with my belief of the two kingdoms- the kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world.

Today, January 18, 2021, I am voluntarily surrendering myself to the U.S. Authorities by walking into the U.S. Embassy in Nicaragua.

Isabella and I will be walking in together; however, we do not know what will occur, especially since neither one of us have current paperwork. We covet your prayers with our following concerns: that we could travel together to the US and that she could find a home that supports her convictions.

In addition, I ask you for prayer specifically for me to honor and to glorify God and for my health. Thank you in advance for your prayers. May our Lord be further glorified in this matter.

 

For His Honor and Glory,

Lisa Miller

Psalm 91

Editor adds:
Lisa forgot that Monday was a holiday back in the US, so the embassy was closed. She tried again Tuesday; Isabella was issued a temporary US Passport, and Lisa was taken into custody. They weren't sure what to do with her, but she begged them not to turn her over to the Nicaraguan authorities, who are known for their cruel treatment of Timo Miller for his part in this case (as recognized the the federal judge in Buffalo, who reduced his sentence to time served because of it). 

 I have not written about the Johannine Comma for some time, but new information has come available, especially regarding the Latin transmission thereof. Here are some preliminary results of my latest research.  

Different ways the Latin textual tradition renders “(they) bear record” in 1 John 5:7, followed by their distribution in the Stuttgart Vulgate

• testes (“are witnesses,“ 14x, none in Johannine literature)

• testificantur (“they testify,” 1x, none in Johannine literature)

• testimonium perhibent (“they provide testimony,” 3 of 4 are in Johannine literature )

• testimonium praebent (“they provide testimony,” none )

• Testimonium dicunt (“they speak testimony,” none)

• Testimonium dant (“they give testimony,” 1x, only in the Vulgate comma)

In his writings, John uses a form of the verb μαρτυρέω (testify) 44 times—a majority of all such uses in the entire NT. It is one of the major themes in Johannine literature. Now, when we look at the Vulgate text, we see that the majority of times the phrase “testimonium perhibent” (“they provide testimony”) is used in the NT are in the writings of John. And this remains the case regardless of what form of the expression is used. And this is, in fact, the common rendering in the Old Latin of μαρτυρέω in 1 John 5, including the several uses in the immediate context of verse 7. I have not yet determined how common it is in translating either half of the Comma, though. Nor where the first usage of testimonium dant is found.